no title

State plans to spend $120 million to repair, replace 200 bridges

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoEric Albrecht | DispatchGov. John Kasich announces the state’s bridge-rehabilitation project from a lectern at the Franklin County Engineer’s West Side maintenance facility. “We can’t do everything, but $120 million over the next three years is a really big deal,” Kasich said.

Your Right to Know

The Ohio Department of Transportation will use $120 million that normally would go to state road
projects to pay for repairs to 220 bridges over the next three years.

State leaders said yesterday that $600 million in savings at ODOT over the past two years and a
$71 million federal infusion helped make the program possible. The funds won’t fix every bridge in
the state, but the plan could take a chunk out of the thousands of bridges in Ohio that are
passable but still need repair.

“We can’t do everything, but $120 million over the next three years is a really big deal,” Gov.
John Kasich said at a news conference.

There are about 44,000 bridges statewide, including about 27,000 that counties and cities
maintain. About 5,700 of those bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

As construction costs have risen, county funding for bridge repairs has been stretched too thin
to keep up with repairs, said Franklin County Engineer Dean Ringle.

ODOT is stepping in to try to stem the tide of bridge projects that have been piling up for
counties and cities.

Next year, the state will pay for repairs on 40 bridges — 10 for cities and 30 for counties —
across the state, including five in central Ohio.

The Beechtree Road span over Mason Run is the only bridge in Franklin County that will be
repaired through the program next year. Two bridges in Licking County and two in Pickaway County
also will be repaired in 2014.

State officials are working with county engineers to determine the remaining 180 bridges that
will be funded through 2016. Ringle said Franklin County is unlikely to benefit from the program
because many of its bridges will be too far down a list that will include thousands statewide.

ODOT Director Jerry Wray said, “This investment is going to pay benefits to millions of people —
millions of Ohioans — for decades to come.”

That includes construction workers and contractors who will compete for bridge-repair jobs, said
Chris Runyan, president of the Ohio Contractors Association. Design, construction and maintenance
of transportation infrastructure supports about 109,000 full-time jobs, which earn about $4.2
billion a year in payroll, he said.

This announcement represents quite a turnaround for the Transportation Department.

In January 2011, state officials said major highway projects had been overpromised for years and
that millions of dollars of construction would need to be delayed. But savings at ODOT and a plan
to issue $1.5 billion in bonds against Ohio Turnpike tolls has put many of those back on
schedule.

This year, the state also received an additional $71 million from the federal government because
other states weren’t prepared to begin construction, Kasich said.

The state announcement comes days after the Columbus City Council approved spending $2 million
for maintenance of 59 city bridges.

The $120 million the state is using for bridge repairs could have been used for other capital
projects, including highway construction, Wray said.

“It’s not going to solve the problem, but it’s going to jumpstart it,” said Fred Pausch,
executive director of the County Engineers Association of Ohio. “We’ve still got a long way to go,
but this is a very positive step.”